CAT Score vs Percentile – 40 to 45% of the Total Marks in CAT Will Get You 99 Percentile – How Many Marks You Need for 99+ Percentile in CAT 2025?

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend: Understanding the CAT score vs percentile is important for every aspirant who are targeting IIMs and other top B-Schools in India. The CAT exam is not just about attempting questions but it is also about how you score compared to others that sets a strong competition and this is where CAT percentile plays an important role.

Many aspirants wonder how much marks they need for 99+ percentile in CAT 2025? Those who are aiming for MBA/PGDM admissions to top-tier institutes like IIM or other reputed institutes must achieve at least 95 to 99+ percentile. However, this also depends on the difficulty level of the CAT question paper 2025. Before understanding the CAT score vs percentile, aspirants must first understand the overall marking scheme, including the number of questions, maximum marks, marks per question, and negative marking etc. Talking about the previous year, the total marks in CAT 2024 were 204, with 68 questions asked across three sections. Familiarity with the CAT score vs Percentile trend is crucial as it helps you set a target score and predict your chances of securing admission in top MBA colleges in India. This year it is expected that if you get 40 – 45% of the total marks in CAT then you will land up getting a 99+ percentile in CAT 2025. Check the score vs percentile trend of CAT here:

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Why CAT Score vs Percentile Trends Important?

More than 3 lakh students register for the CAT exam, making it a highly competitive process. CAT aspirants aiming for the 99+ percentile must understand all the aspects of the CAT marks vs percentile trend. This trend indicates the difficulty level of the exam, and other candidates’ performance can affect your total CAT score vs percentile. To ensure fairness and consistency in comparing candidates’ performance across different test sessions, the candidate’s score will undergo a process of normalisation. The normalisation process shall adjust for location and scale differences of score distributions across different forms. Once normalised across different forms, the marks are further normalized across different sections. The resulting scaled scores are then converted into CAT percentiles for shortlisting purposes. In this article, we have compiled details about the CAT score vs percentile previous trends and how many marks you need for 99+ percentiles in CAT 2025.

Better knowledge about the CAT score vs percentile correlation is important for structured goal setting and exam-day strategy. For example, knowing that a score of around 40-45% of the total marks can land you in the 99+ percentile range enables CAT aspirants to approach the section with a more realistic target. This approach can help you manage time across different sections, prioritise accuracy over multiple attempts, and reduce exam time stress and anxiety. A clear understanding about the CAT score vs percentile allows aspirants to identify which section in CAT you need to contribute to get high percentiles so that you will prepare accordingly.

What is the CAT Score vs Percentile?

You must first understand the CAT score and the CAT percentile to gain insights into the CAT score vs percentile trends in a detailed manner. Firstly, the CAT raw scores are normalized across different sections to arrive at the scaled scores, which shall be further converted into percentiles. While the CAT percentile indicates the percentage of test-takers who scored less than you.  For example, if you score 99 percentile in CAT. This implies that you are ahead of 99% of the test takers. We have shared below the previous year’s analysis to help you understand the marks you need to score 99+ percentile in CAT 2025.

CAT Score vs Percentile Trends for Previous Years (Last 5-Years Analysis)

The exam authorities release scaled scores for each section (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension (VARC), Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning (DILR), and Quantitative Ability (QA)) and total along with the CAT Percentiles on its official website. Aspirants must analyse the CAT score vs percentile previous years to get an idea of the competition trends, difficulty level, and set realistic goals accordingly during the preparation. This approach can help them optimise their current study plan and improve their chances of scoring 99+ percentile in CAT 2025. Understanding the expected score vs percentile CAT 2025 after appearing in the exam can also enable them to predict their percentile and chances of clearing the CAT cutoff marks of their target B-school. It has been observed that the CAT marks vs percentile changes every year due to factors like the number of test-takers, difficulty level, etc. Read to find complete details of CAT Score vs Percentile trends and how these insights can help you strategise your preparation effectively.

Number of CAT Exam Takers from 2020 to 2024

Year	Number of Candidates Registered	Number of Candidates Appeared	Percentage increase/decrease in test takers (%)
2020	2,27,835	1,90,144	(-) 9.42
2021	2,29,969	1,91,660	0.79
2022	2,55,501	2,22,184	15.92
2023	3,23,000	2,88,000	29.6
2024	3,29,000	2,93,000	1.73

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2024

Percentile	Marks in 2024
99.9	123
99.5	104
99	96
97	79
95	70
90	58
80	44

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2023

Percentile	Marks in 2023
99.9	101
99.5	84
99	76
97	61
95	54
90	44
80	35

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2022

Percentile	Marks on 2022
99.9	109
99.5	92
99	84
97	72
95	62
90	49
80	36.02

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2021

Percentile	Marks in 2021
99.9	124
99.5	110
99	98
97	82
95	73
90	60
80	45

CAT Score vs Percentile Trend 2020

Percentile	Marks in 2020
99.9	130
99.5	115
99	101
97	85
95	76
90	63
80	48

Section-Wise CAT Score vs Percentile Trends

Aspirants should also check the previous year’s CAT Score vs Percentile across all the sections to get an idea of the competition level and set target scores for each subject accordingly. In CAT 2024, aspirants needed to score around 36 marks to secure 99.5 percentile in Quant. Similarly, those who were aiming for 99.5 percentile in LRDI were required to obtain around 41 marks in CAT 2024. Students needed to achieve around 44 marks in CAT VARC 2024 to secure 99.5 percentile. Check below the section-wise Score vs Percentile CAT Trends from 2024 to 2022 in the tables below.

CAT Score vs Percentile 2024: Quant Score vs Percentile Trends

Percentile	Scores
99.9	45
99.5	36
99	33
97	25
95	22
90	17
85	13
80	11
75	9

CAT Marks vs Percentile 2024: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

Percentile	Scores
99.9	50
99.5	41
99	37
97	30
95	27
90	22
85	19
80	17
75	14

CAT Score vs Percentile 2024: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

Percentile	Scores
99.9	55
99.5	44
99	40
97	33
95	30
90	24
85	20
80	18
75	15

CAT Marks vs Percentile 2023: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

CAT Percentile	Scaled CAT Score
100	61.66
99.99	57.32
99.87	51.02
99.5	44
99.26	41.76
99	39.7
98.21	35.88
96.72	31.47
95	28.68
93.5	26.33
90	23.39
86.43	20.66
80	17.58
75	15.27
62.28	11.53

CAT Score vs Percentile 2023: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

CAT Percentile	Scaled CAT Score
100	50.6
99.99	42.7
99.9	36.58
99.71	32.78
99.43	29.71
99.14	27.56
99	27.39
98.37	24.58
96.83	20.88
95.53	19.6
90	15.63
84.87	13.01
80	11.67
77.88	10.81
72.94	9.67

CAT Marks vs Percentile 2022: VARC Score vs Percentile Trends

VARC Percentile	VARC Scaled Score
99.94 %ile	52.43
99.73 %ile	45.57
99.41 %ile	41.77
98.12 %ile	35.42
97.84 %ile	34.18
95.35 %ile	29.12
93.43 %ile	26.59
90.80 %ile	24.06
83.13 %ile	18.99
77.59 %ile	16.46

CAT Score vs Percentile 2022: LRDI Score vs Percentile Trends

DILR Percentile	DILR Scaled Score
99.99 %ile	48.31
99.98 %ile	45.98
99.61 %ile	34.37
99.41 %ile	31.96
99.33 %ile	30.89
97.37 %ile	22.76
96.67 %ile	21.6
92.29 %ile	16.95
89.56 %ile	14.75

Score vs Percentile CAT 2022: Quant Score vs Percentile Trends

Quant Percentile	Quant Scaled Score
99.95	49.38
99.9	46.3
99.86	44.26
99.45	36.85
99.38	36.07
97.46	26.85
95.72	23.31
85.97	14.57
99.95	49.38
99.9	46.3

CAT Score vs Percentile (2020–2024)

Percentile	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020
99.9	123	101	109	124	130
99.5	104	84	92	110	115
99	96	76	84	98	101
97	79	61	72	82	85
95	70	54	62	73	76
90	58	44	49	60	63
80	44	35	36	45	48

Why CAT Score vs Percentile Trends Important?

More than 3 lakh students register for the CAT exam every year which is making it the most competitive management entrance tests in India. So understanding the CAT score vs percentile trend is important for aspirants who are targeting the top B-Schools like IIMs. This trend covers how many marks are typically needed to achieve the specific percentile range such as converting 99+ percentile. This also reflects the difficulty level of the exam and the performance of candidates across different slots.

Moreover, analyzing the CAT score vs percentile trends from the past years helps aspirants set realistic targets to score well in the examination. For example : knowing that a score of around 95-100 marks in recent year is equivalent to the 99+ percentile that he;ps candidates to focus on their preparation accordingly. These trends also covers the performance during the mock tests and making the informed decisions about the time management and questions selection across different sections.

How to Convert CAT Score to Percentile?

The CAT raw scores will be initially computed based on the marking scheme outlined by the official authorities. The marking scheme states that 3 marks shall be awarded to each correct response, and 1 mark will be deducted for every wrong answer in MCQs. As the entrance test will be conducted in different sessions, so normalisation process will be adopted to ensure fairness and equity in the comparison of candidates’ performances. Upon completing the normalisation across different forms, the scores will be further normalised for different sections. The Scaled Scores secured by this process shall be converted into percentiles for the shortlisting purpose. We have shared below an example on how to calculate the percentile score for the QA section. A similar procedure will be followed for the overall percentile score calculation for the other two sections, i.e. DILR and VARC. The guide to compute the CAT overall and sectional percentiles is shared below:

Step 1: Determine the overall number of test-takers (N) who took part in the CAT examination, including all sessions.

Step 2: Assign ranks to all CAT test-takers based on their scaled scores in the QA section. If two or more test-takers have the same scaled score, they should be given the same rank.

For example, if two aspirants secure the highest scaled score in the QA section, they will be assigned a rank of 1. Furthermore, the aspirant (s) who secure the 2nd highest scaled score in the QA section will be allocated a rank of 3 and so on.

Step 3: Compute the percentile score (P) of the test-taker with rank (r) in the QA section as:

𝑃 = ((𝑁 − 𝑟)/𝑁) x 100

Step 4: Round off the computed percentile score (P) of the aspirant up to two decimal points.

For example:

• Percentile scores which is above or equal to 99.995 are rounded off to 100.
• Percentile scores between 99.985 and 99.995 are rounded off to 99.99, and so on.

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